Quite by accident, I
discovered a connection between two unrelated items (or
so I thought) in Naples today. The tiny island off the
tip of the cape that separates the bays of Naples and
Pozzuoli is named Nisida. The original Greek settlers of
the area called this small island Nesis. The
Romans called it Nisida. It is here that Brutus
plotted the assassination of Julius Caesar, and it is
here that Cicero says apud illum multas horas in
Néside—that he had a long talk with Brutus after
the assassination to discuss the future of Rome. In the
1800s Nisida was the site of a Bourbon prison, then an
Italian state penitentiary, and, now, a reformatory for
juvenile offenders.

Nisida before the
first indignity

In the early
1900s Nisida suffered two indignities: one, it was
joined to the mainland by a causeway, and, two, it was
encroached upon by the unsightly steel industry (photo) in Bagnoli. That
patch of industrial blight is (as of 2002) a thing of
the past, as the Campania region and the city of Naples
pursue plans to rejuvenate the entire Bagnoli area. Most
of the physical plant of the ex-steel mill has already
been torn down, and there is already a thriving "Science
City" fair ground on the premises in Bagnoli (but see
last paragraph, below). Currently, part of the island of
Nisida is also home to the administrative headquarters
of NAVSOUTH, the naval forces for NATO's Southern
Command. Also, there is currently some hope of luring
the next America's Cup to the area. That would require
major investment in port facilities. At present, there
is a small port for pleasure craft, and that is where I
found myself this morning, helping my friend, Bill, get
his splendid sailboat, Down East, into the water
and noticing how uneasy I am with such phrases as
"Avast!" "Belay that!" and "Batten down the hatches!"
("Stand by to repel boarders!" did give me a thrill just
to pronounce, though. I think it even shivered my
timbers.)

Later in the day, I
was looking for an address on via Poerio in
Naples. Now, just as you can get lost in Naples by going
to the wrong via Caracciolo (see here), so, too, can you wind
up on the wrong via Poerio. There is one named
for Carlo Poerio (1802-67) and another for Alessandro
Poerio (1802-1848). They were brothers, both intimately
connected with the Risorgimento, the political
movement to unify Italy. Interestingly, their father,
Giuseppe Poerio (1775-1843) was a supporter of the
Neapolitan Republic of 1799, for which he was sentenced
to life in prison. A family of trouble-makers, clearly.

On the slopes of the Nisida
crater are the ruins of what is thought to be
the villa of Brutus. In the background are the
town of Bagnoli, then Cape Posillipo, then Mt.
Vesuvius in the distance.

In 1849, Carlo Poerio
was sentenced by the Bourbon court of Naples to 24 years
at hard labor for his part in the political turmoil in
Naples of the previous year. He was sent to—here is the
connection—Nisida. He and other prisoners were confined
in such miserable conditions that William Gladstone,
after a visit to the prison in 1851, felt compelled to
write his two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen on the
State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government.
In these letters, Gladstone coined the now famous
description of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies as "the
negation of God erected into a system of Government."
Indignation throughout Europe was partially responsible
for Poerio's release in 1858. He was exiled but returned
to Italy in 1861. He died that year in Florence.
[For more on the Gladstone "Letters...," click here.]

update: June 2015 -The announcement in
May of the closing of the
Nisida youth detention facility in Bagnoli (the
white buildings on the rim of the extinct crater in
photo above right) is a reminder of just how much has
changed over the years. In the last decade, the
considerable NATO military presence in Bagnoli has
evaporated. The NATO Joint Forces Command (JFC -
formerly 'AFSouth') moved lock, stock and barrel out of
Bagnoli and up the coast a few miles to a new facility on the
shores of Lago Patria. Part of the military presence in
Bagnoli was also the location of the headquarters of the
Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH HQ
pictured, right) at the Nisida harbor. That went away in
June of 2013 concurrently with the shift of the large
JFC base from Bagnoli to Lago Patria. The naval HQ had
been there since 1967 when it moved from its earlier
facility at Malta. Component members of the
participating military forces stationed at Nisida were
either absorbed into their local national command
structures or moved to NATO spaces at Lago Patria. The
building pictured was handed over to the Italian navy
and now serves as a logistics administration building.
NAVSOUTH was deactivated and integrated into the Allied
Maritime Command, located at Northwood in the United
Kingdom. That is full-circle since that is where it all
started in 1953 under the command of Rear Admiral Louis
Mountbatten

Thus, at one time, most of
the island of Nisida and adjacent waters seemed to have
something to do with either Italian state services, such
as the youth facility, or the large international
military presence (NATO). There were, and still are, a
relatively limited number of civilian leisure facilities
such as beaches and mooring spaces for pleasure craft
along the causeway top photo this page (built in the
early part of 1900s) leading to the island, itself. It
is hard to say anything definitive about the final
disposition of any of Bagnoli given its long history of
urban blight and entrenched crime. For example, the
highly touted new Science City, symbol of the rebirth of
Bagnoli, located just
before the causeway, was burned
to the ground by the mob in 2013. Back to the
Youth Facility...My secret fear is that it is going to
be sold off to private developers. A few years ago, I
was joking with this item
about "caves for a song." But they weren't
kidding. So we shall see.